Follow the crazy adventures of an Alabama cyclist taking on the Race Across America in 2015.

Guntersville Training Race

Small turnout today with the cold and rain, but at the last minute a Velocity rider rolled to the line to make 10 riders for the A race. We had three riders – me, Sammy, and Phillip. Moontoast/Tristar had two riders (Travis and Mike Lanham). Velocity had three riders, and then there were two independent riders. Sammy rolled off the front early on in the first lap and extended his lead so that Tristar and Velocity had to share the work chasing. Initially (actually for about the first lap), it was just Travis riding at the front setting a hard tempo and reeling Sammy back in. There were some attacks during this time and Philip and I took turns covering them. Sammy had such a big gap though that he carried his lead well into the second lap, and it wasn’t until Velocity started helping out with the chase that we finally caught up to him 2/3 of the way through the second lap. I launched an immediate counter attack and got away solo but with nobody to help share the work, there was no way I was going to be able to stay away until the end with 30+ miles left to go. So I shut it down and we had a series of attacks and counter attacks. During all these attacks our group was whittled down to six. I tried attacking a few times and each time we would get a small break, but with me knowing that Sammy would easily win the sprint I couldn’t commit fully to any of the breaks. Eventually though Mike Lanham and Tim Carboneau and I got a substantial gap and we started rotating through. With Tria and Tristar both represented in the break, Ed Whitehorn (Velocity) was left to do the chasing — and chase he did — for something like 15 miles nonstop until he brought our break back with less than 2 miles to go!!! At that point I was already near the front so I ramped up the speed going into the last corner with Sammy on my wheel knowing that Sammy had the win locked up and that if I sprinted hard enough I could maybe stay in the top 3. But almost immediately out of the corner, Sammy saw that we had the gap and so he eased up to let me take the win. A Tria 1-2 finish! I believe Travis rolled across for third. Cool course – here’s the topocreator map and elevation profile for one lap of the course…